Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 10:01:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Kelly Yancey <kbyanc@alcnet.com> To: Kazutaka YOKOTA <yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: modex support (again) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905180931180.36919-100000@kronos.alcnet.com> In-Reply-To: <199905172353.IAA08926@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp>
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On Tue, 18 May 1999, Kazutaka YOKOTA wrote: > > I think you just nailed the problem here. It requires a prohibitive > >amount of effort to support modex video modes given the return. What I am > >thinking about is removing the 320x240 mode (since it is impossibly > >difficult to deal with)...no one is using it now so no one would be > >affected. I would also like to add a comment into one of the source files > >indicating why we have chosen not to support unchained VGA modes (ie. > >"modex" modes) so that we can prevent this question from arising again in > >the future. > > On a slightly related note, I am currently in the process of developing > >patches to add more useful "tweaked" modes to the video driver: > > graphics 720x480, 16 colors (90x30 8x16 character cells) > > graphics 256x256, 256 colors (32x32 8x8 character cells) > > graphics 296x220, 256 colors (37x27 8x8 character cells) > > text 90x25, 90x30, 90x43, 90x50, 90x60 > > > > The patches will also update vidcontrol to allow selecting any of the > >modes. > > Please have a look at my latest syscons update patch: > > http://www.freebsd.org/~yokota/syscons-update.17May.tar.gz > > It includes 90-column text mode patch you previously submitted (PR: > i386/7510)! Very cool. Thanks! > > > I listed the character cell sizes I picked for the graphics > >modes...which brings me to an interesting question: how come we pick a > >single character cell size for video modes? For video modes 640x480 or > >more it would be nice to select what size the character cells are (for > >example, selecting an 8x8 cell size rather than 8x16 to double the number > >of characters which could be written). > > Um, I have not advertised this before, but... Syscons in 3.X and > 4.0-CURRENT already can do this not only for the VESA 800x600 mode but > also for certain other video modes. > Holding out on us, huh? :) > > I'm not really sure what practical use there is for using graphics modes > >to render text (and hence why character cell sizes for graphics modes > >would even be used). But currently syscons can do it from VESA 800x600 > >(syscons renders the text). Presumably, though, if it is useful, there > >isn't anything preventing the implementation from being extended to all > >graphics modes (except for modex that is...but I'm now of the impression > >that should be axed). Finally, with syscons having the ability to render > >text fonts in graphics modes, shouldn't we be able to redefine the notion > >of character cell size for graphics modes to be the default character cell > >size and allow any available text font be used to render text in graphics > >modes? > > Yes, it can be extended to support all graphics modes (except mode X > :-). But, how useful will it be? The VESA 800x600 raster text mode > was a kludge for some laptop systems, so it was justifiable. But, how > about others? 1024x768 mode can contain only 128 columns if we are to > use 8-dot wide font. This is not as good as 132 column text modes > provided by VESA. > Yeah, I can see that. I was basically just curious if the plan was originally to support this sort of thing since real character cell size values were included for each graphics mode too...which might imply that there was some intention to implement text rendering in all text modes at some point. On the other hand, maybe it was just for the sake of completeness :)...that's really what I was trying to find out. Now I know it is the latter. Thanks for the great feedback, Kelly ~kbyanc@alcnet.com~ FreeBSD - The Power To Serve - http://www.freebsd.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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